Naomi parked in the parking lot beneath Mitch’s condo building. I took a slow, deep breath, steeling my nerves, before I opened the door and climbed out.

I wouldn’t have expected Naomi to notice, but she rubbed her hand comfortingly over my back as we headed across the concrete floor to the elevators. I felt a spark of comfort as her slender hand brushed against my shoulder.

I hoped Mitch had made things easy. I hoped to find some kind of clue, a journal or documents that would point us towards a possible reason for my father to have been attacked. The police said it might be random. I didn't believe that for a minute.

I also hoped to find a key to the family lock box before I showed up to a bank where no amount of sweet-talking should get me in.

We took the elevator up to the lobby, where I headed briskly across the lobby to the bank of elevators. Alone when I pressed the button, I turned around to find Naomi, wide-eyed, looking around the plush marble lobby.

She smiled as if she knew she'd been caught, a self-conscious quirk of her lips, as she quickened her stride to reach my side. "It's nice.”

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

"I guess if you've been here, it's lost its charm," she said.

"I haven't," I said. "We had a holiday together a few years ago – I forget if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas – but we did it at the house. Mitch picked this place for its high security and deliberately low profile. As well as that worked out. He always claimed it didn't have room for the lot of us."

"When did Mitch buy this place?"

I reached past her to push the elevator button, inhaling the scent of her perfume, a floral with vanilla notes. A familiar tingle of desire ran through my body. Stay on task, Rob.

"Five, six years ago?"

She was silent, but I knew she was thinking about how Mitch had owned this place for half a decade without his sons seeing it.

"Rich families are dysfunctional. That's the comfort poor people take, right?"

"I didn't say any such thing. And I wouldn't take any joy in your family having troubles, Rob."

"I know," I said, feeling shitty for the way I'd said that, even though I was trying to be light-hearted. Everything I said to Naomi seemed to come out cock-eyed.

We got off on the eighth floor. The door with the crime scene tape: that was how I knew which was my father’s condominium.

I knocked, a quick rat-tat of my knuckles against the smooth wooden door. Why did I bother to knock? I shrugged self-consciously at Naomi.

Then I stood with my body blocking Naomi from the CCTV that looked down the hall, leaning casually against the door as if I were waiting for my father. Naomi hesitated for a second, and then she dug into her purse for the lock-picking kit. She half-crouched in front of the lock, and a minute later, the knob turned in her hand.

I nodded and went in ahead of her.

I had known, in a distant kind of way, that this was where my father had been attacked When I walked into the condo, with the modern photography prints on the gray walls and expensive Brazilian hardwood underfoot, and I saw the coffee table kicked over on its side, a glass spilled across the floor, it came home.

Suddenly I could imagine my father in a fight for his life, tripping over the coffee table. My stomach dropped with dread and rage.

I knelt to right the coffee table, picking up the glass to take it to the sink. It was sticky from the spilled liquid. The bitter, honeyed scent brought me back instantly to my father's study when I was a boy, after my mother died. My father, multi-tasking, drinking Scotch as he read us bedtime stories. I'd bet Naomi's father hadn't been drunk every night before his kids were even in bed.

"Are you okay?" Naomi asked.

"Fine," I said. "Absolutely. I'm going to take the art off the walls, move the heavy stuff. You want to get started searching the bedroom?"

"Sure," she said. "Call me if you need help with the big stuff."

That thought made me quirk an eyebrow, feeling slightly better. I tried to push away the image of Mitch’s struggle, what might have ended up being his last minutes of consciousness. The odds were high Mitch would never surface from his coma again.

Naomi disappeared into the back of the condo, and I was grateful to have space to myself for now.

I searched the apartment systematically. I knew I was searching in the wake of the criminals who had hurt my father, and I would have to be more thorough than they had because if there was anything easily found, they would have already stepped over Mitch’s body carrying it. If they’d just been after money and valuables it would be obvious from what they’d taken. And if they were after something else…

I moved to the sideboard, mechanically sweeping the inside of drawers and underneath the cabinets before the top of the sideboard itself caught my eye. Mitch had photos of us boys in silver frames. One of them showed him kneeling on the deck, an arm around my waist and Nicky’s. I leaned against him, smiling, showing off a smile missing my front teeth. Something twisted inside me.

Naomi came back into the living room. "I didn't find the key. Or any papers that seem like anything pertinent. But your dad has... a collection. Of sentimental stuff."

"Nothing matters except the key to the lockbox, laptops, hard drives, USB sticks, that kind of thing." I said brusquely.

She hesitated. "All right. I'll go search the kitchen. Maybe he hid something in a bowl or a cereal box."

"Thanks.”

"There's a mirror in there that looks heavy," she said. "You might want to go in and move it, look behind. I couldn't."

I nodded. She disappeared into the kitchen, and I heard the rustle of her at work, opening cabinet doors and searching through every object. Ridiculous. Couldn't Mitch have trusted his kids with whatever his secrets were, so that we didn't have to search in his wake through pots and cereal boxes for a reason for someone to try to kill him?

I finished the living room and went into the bedroom. The oak closet doors stood open, the clothes subtly disarranged, as if someone had searched the inside of each jacket. The shelf that ran along the top of the closet was empty, and the boxes that must have once filled it were instead on the bed, the tops in a pile on the thick carpet. I expected to see files, but the boxes were full of stuff. I frowned, trying to make sense of what looked like a yard sale in boxes: baseball mitts worn to gray at the center, yearbooks, birthday cards.

I pulled out a card with balloons on the front, and suddenly I was eight years old again. Joe was with me. We’d stopped at the drug store when Joe was driving me home from Little League. "This one," I'd told Joe. "Can we get Dad a real balloon too? Just like this one?" Joe had put a hand on my shoulder, hugging me. "Sure. Your dad loves balloons, just like you." Of course, the memory was of Joe; I didn't remember giving Mitch the card. I would have assumed that he threw it away.

But he hadn't. These boxes of crap were my crap, Liam's, Josh's, Nicky's. I thumbed quickly through it, some of the items bringing up strong memories. It must have all carried a memory for Dad, something that reminded him of a time with his young sons. I bit my lip against a sudden tide of emotion. Why the fuck hadn't Mitch done anything with this sentiment when it still would have mattered? When we could have tried again to have a relationship as a father and a son?

Back to work. I could worry about my father and my father's feelings and my father’s awful legacy when I had time, when everyone was safe. I slapped a lid down on top of one of the boxes.

But a book in one of the bins caught his eye. A kids' book. The Boys' Handbook of Treasure-Hunting, Code-Breaking and Adventure-Seeking. I didn't remember it from childhood, so maybe it had been a gift for the younger boys. I plucked it out of the bin, rifling through the pages, looking for a key taped amidst it. But there was nothing.

Still, a thread of doubt made me decide to keep the book. Just in case.

"Rob?" Naomi stood in the doorway, her eyes on me worried, although she glanced around at the pile-up of sentimentality without saying anything. "I found a leather laptop bag and a docking station for a laptop, but there's no computer in the apartment."

"I think I should talk to my father's lawyers," I said. "Whoever came after Mitch, I don't think they were just looking for valuables. I think they were looking for information."

"Why's that?"

I tucked the book under my arm, reluctant to leave the condo behind without answers. "Laptops aren't the easiest thing to steal. They're too easily traced." I glanced around at the mess, fighting a surge of fury. "Beyond that? I have a feeling."

There was an insistent tapping on the front door. Naomi stared at me, wide-eyed.

I held a finger to my lips, gesturing to her to stay put, then moved past her quickly on silent feet. Besides the bedroom doorway, the motion-activated camera feed had turned on above the two-way speaker I could use to communicate with the person at the door. Two men in police uniforms stood at the door. Well, that was both fast, and not fast enough; no one had helped my father. If they were truly the police. I didn't feel like I could trust anyone now.

I glanced at the door, which was heavy enough for me to think it had a steel core beneath the dark wood, and the reinforced hinges. My father had set the bedroom up as a safe room.

Why the hell had Mitch felt he needed a safe room, even once he’d retired? He must have seen this end coming.

"Stay in here," I mouthed to Naomi, touching the latch on the inside of the door. "Lock yourself in."

There was no way out of the condo except back through that door where the maybe-police waited.

She nodded. I went quietly down the hall, and she eased the door shut behind me. A tiny bit of stress dropped away as I heard the click of the bolt. At least for now, Naomi was safe.

I called the security department for the building, which I still had in my phone after demanding an explanation of what had happened to Mitch. Despite having advertised state-of-the-art security, the truth was their physical security was one guy watching the CCTV feed. When Security answered the phone gruffly, I said, "This is Officer Smith at precinct D-4. Trying to make sense of a message here. Did you call us with a possible B&E in progress?"

"Yeah," the guy sounded aggravated. "I did. You mean there's no --"

I hung up on him. Good sign. But just in case, I stood to one side of the front door when I pushed the intercom button. "Yes?"

"This is the police. Come out with your hands up. Now."

"Yes sir," I said, making my tone easy, already pulling my money clip out of my pocket. "My name's Rob Delaney. This is my father's condo." I unlocked the front door again and stepped out into the hall, still tense for a fight in case things went sideways.

"ID," the one cop said, pushing me against the wall. I already had my hands up, and I waggled the clip in my hand.

The cop took it from me roughly, pulled out my ID, and looked me over. "It's him."

I felt the tension ease slightly in the hallway. At least no one was inclined to shoot me right now.

"What're you doing here?" A young cop with a heavy Boston accent gestured at the crime scene tape.

"I know, I don't belong here," I said. "I'm just trying to figure out what's going on with my father. He's in a coma at --"

"We know." The young cop said. "I found him."

"You did?" I asked. "Can I ask you some questions?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Delaney," he said. "We're going to ask you some questions."

"Hold on," I said. "I have to call my girlfriend."

"You have to call your girlfriend? Really?"

"Well," I said. "She's in there."

The cop said, “You better get her out here. You both are in trouble.”

I didn’t feel like I was in that much trouble, really, now that no one was pointing a gun at me. Everything else was negotiable.

Well, except for maybe Naomi’s ire as she stepped out besides me into the hall, her palms above her head like she was about to break into a gospel song. She shot me a dark look.

“Sorry,” I mouthed.